Since 1984 Informal Venture Networks (VCNs) have been formed and are currently operating in several states and Canada. However, little has been written in regard to the performance of these networks. This article presents the results of preliminary research concerning their performance. Our...

The Pepperdine Private Capital Markets Project survey for business owners, administered during the spring of 2010, reveals an increasingly important role of friends and family (Friends/Family) to provide capital for privately-held businesses. Examining business owners’ perceptions of their...

This study examines the early stage investment activity of UK serial investors, individuals who have made at least three private investments. Two distinct groups emerged; one which invested on their own all the time ("solo serial investors") and the other which invested with others almost...

Despite the recent increase in research on informal venture capital there are many aspects of this market for which no information exists. One such issue is exits. This exploratory study is the first to address this issue. It is based on a survey of 38 active business angels in Finland who had...

The purpose of this paper is to provide a direct test of the small-firm uniqueness hypothesis advanced by Ang (1991). We do this by using the 5B-IPO program of the SEC as our instrument to define a small firm. Having identified small firms, we test the three IPO anomalies to see if small firms...

The paper presents an adverse selection-based explanation of the fact that some entrepreneurs choose to finance multiple projects together by issuing a single security and other entrepreneurs decide to finance each project separately. We consider the financing problem of an entrepreneur who has...

This paper is a first attempt at differentiating the problems of finance of the privately held small businesses from their larger counterparts. Small businesses, though not concerned with the problems and opportunities associated with publicly traded firms, have different types of complexities,...

Two main approaches have been utilized to explain the relationship between entrepreneurs and their investors. The first is based on the separation of ownership and management i.e. the so-called principal-agent approach. The second emphasizes trust and cooperation in the relationship. This...

This paper attempts to extend the Certification Paradigm--mainly used in the literature as an explanation for IPO underpricings--to provide guidelines to entrepreneurs in their efforts to secure funding for new ventures. After extending the model to cases of pre-venture-capital start-up firms,...

The stock market return and the risk of 33 quoted European venture capital companies during the period 1977-1991 are studied. The return is negative on average with eight of the 33 companies having a return that is higher than the market return. However, the systematic risk (measured by the beta...